When going to A&E is actually ok...

Most parents don't go to A&E much, but we are there quite often. Unusually on Sunday our trip to the hospital was so 'normal' that it was almost good. Little monkey had been free-wheeling down the hill on his bike getting faster and faster. The only problem is, he doesn't know how to use the brakes. Quick as a flash he'd lost control and flipped over the handlebars, face first. One look at the great big gash on his chin and I knew we had to take him in. Once there, with pain relief administered he soon calmed down and we settled into the kids room for the interminable wait to be seen. But as we got bored and frustrated at being made to wait with a blood-stained child, it actually occurred to me that this was a rather good trip to A&E. Normally we enter through the ambulance bay doors, having come in on Blues and Twos. Normally he's wired up to a heart and BP monitor, with an IV in his arm and a tube down his nose. Normally he's unconscious and doped up to the eyeballs on various different tranquilizer drugs. Normally we have to spend several hours in the children's ward while he recovers. But this time it was what other people would call normal. He was going too fast on his bike, just like any other little boy. He fell off and cut his face, just like any other little boy. And we waited a whole hour for a 3 minute procedure, just like any other family. Sometimes it's ok to go to A&E, because it reminds you that he still does normal things and he's just a kid after all.